


Keeping House

by watermelonsuit



Category: Bride of Re-Animator (1989), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watermelonsuit/pseuds/watermelonsuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>They're dead, Dan,</em> Herbert told him when he convinced him to move to the mortuary. <em>They're dead</em>. It's not the dead Dan worries about.</p>
<p>Herbert West: (just possibly) human disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

With an acre of corpses buried outside the house and Herbert West skulking around downstairs, Dan Cain gets spooked, he'll admit that. _He's dead, Daniel, he won't hurt you_ , Dan's mother told him at his first funeral, a cousin he'd never met; he can't remember much more than his terror and a faceless priest speaking of the resurrection of the dead.

_They're dead, Dan_ , Herbert told him when he convinced him to move the mortuary.  _They're dead._  It's not the dead Dan worries about.

Herbert West is becoming domesticated, potentially even human. He's still an asshole about it, possibly even worse, like when Dan finds him cooking Dan's last packet of ramen instead of his usual week-old leftovers, and sometimes he's so close to human that it hurts, like when Dan walks into the laundry room to find Herbert in a t-shirt stained permanently pink. He's pouring bleach in with his shirts and running water in the basin, and as it foams, he thrusts his arms in up to his elbows.

"Herbert!"

"I'm perfectly all right.”

Dan drags him away. "Yeah, the next time you won't be so lucky."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact." Dan takes Herbert's dripping hands into his own, scrutinizing them for burns, but there's nothing but some dry skin, probably there before.

"You're exaggerating." Herbert pulls his hands away.

"Get a stick or—or something, don't use your hands."

"Yes, Doctor Cain," Herbert snips.

"Then I'll get something." Dan goes back to the kitchen and finds a ladle they haven't used since he had time to make real food.

"Thank you." It's only a mumble, but has Herbert West ever thanked him? Has he ever worn that old t-shirt or any other in front of Dan? (He ought to put it in with the rest of the shirts, Dan thinks, and turns red himself.)

"Do you always use that much?" Dan asks Herbert as the shirts bubble and drift under.

He nods. "Sterilization is at least as important as stain removal."

So Herbert West is an asshole, but he's predictable. When Dan heats up a can of chicken soup for dinner, Herbert stands so close to the stove that Dan finds another can, just for him. _This is for you, okay,_ Dan's glare says, but Herbert doesn't back off until a cloud of steam hits him in the face and his glasses film over.

"Thank you," Herbert says for the second time in one evening, in his life for all Dan knows. It's uncanny. They eat in silence and Herbert does the dishes for once. He uses too much soap, of course, but Dan doesn't complain. Once Herbert's satisfied with his laundry, he drapes the shirts over an exposed pipe and goes back to his room, silent for the rest of the evening. It's quiet as an undisturbed tomb.

\---

  
It's just past four in the morning when Dan wakes to Herbert's shoes clicking down the hall and into the kitchen. He can't sleep when he knows Herbert's awake and up to something. The very least he can be up to is wearing shoes in the house in spite of Dan's insistence on no shoes in the house; shoes mean trouble, biohazards. It's as good a time as any, Dan tells himself and his alarm clock, to face the day and Herbert West.

"Good morning."

Herbert is carving an orange with a scalpel on the table, no plate. He doesn't respond. In spite of the scuffed dress shoes and pants, he's wearing the t-shirt with the Rorschach stains from last night.

"I never see you in the morning." Dan sits down with two cups of black coffee and sets one next to Herbert.

"Then good morning, although I don't see the point." Herbert takes a burnt, bitter sip and skewers a section of the orange, slides it off the scalpel into his fingers.

"I need your help," Herbert says. "I need to know you have full faith in our work." Herbert slips him a list written on the back of a takeout receipt. "Can you get these?"

Dan eyes the list. Half a dozen compounds, a few unstable chemicals. Unusual, but nothing suspicious unless the pharmacist knows Herbert West is his roommate. "Sure."

Herbert nods. "Then we can begin tonight."

But Dan has a twelve-hour shift that turns into a sixteen-hour one with emergencies all across the ward and a surgery where he has to pinch himself to stay awake. Remembering to order and bring home the drugs, that's enough, remembering to leave them out with a note that says _HERBERT_ , that's plenty before he finally crashes face first into his unmade bed.

"Dan?" Herbert asks from outside.

_Fuck_. Dan turns over. "What is it?"

"Good night, Dan," Herbert grumbles, and then slips off to the basement.


	2. Chapter 2

Dan sleeps until the last possible minute, and clambers out of bed at the first beep of his alarm clock, stumbling to the shower. It's something he perfected in college, working until he had to sleep and sleeping until he had to leave for class. It's worse these days, though, especially with the nightmares. He thinks of Meg, he thinks of the girl in the safety video he had to watch last week, but there's no time for that, he didn't count jerking off when he set his alarm, and it's not like he can time it anymore. He settles for scrubbing the house's odor of mothballs and decay off, not feeling quite alive himself.

Herbert's on call today, although Dan doesn't see him often—he nods when they run into each other and clicks his pen. They have one consultation together, a man in his late seventies recently in remission.

As they enter the room, Herbert looks at Dan, who nods in encouragement, then at the patient. "You're very much alive," he announces.

"What?"

"You're alive," Herbert says, louder.

The patient looks irritated; his wife only stares. "I know that. For how long?"

"At current rates, anywhere within a range of twenty years. Statistically, given your advanced age, five to seven years is much more likely. That could be extended, of course, by palliative treatment."

"A beacon of hope, this one," the patient says, rolling his eyes as his wife looks down at her feet. "I bet—"

"But you won't necessarily die of cancer," Herbert interrupts. The patient glares at Dan.

"I'm sorry." _He tries_ , Dan wants to add. "The good news is that you've beaten this."

"For now." The man sighs. "Thank you, gentlemen."

Dan shoots Herbert a dirty look and they part ways again.

\---

Herbert is already waiting by the car when Dan gets there; Dan ignores him and climbs into the car. "What was that about?" he finally asks after they're on the road.

Herbert squints for a moment. "Oh, him. He hasn't got that much time, Dan, and he couldn't be of use." Herbert sounds hopeful. Suspiciously hopeful.

Dan's jaw tightens.

"At least not until we have sufficient funding to study the use of reagent in the elderly."

"You're going to apply for a grant?"

"Of course. Once we've perfected the formula in—" Herbert breaks off as the car lurches. "Are you _driving_?"

Dan clutches the steering wheel, brushing Herbert's hand away.

"Then drive."

The rest of the trip home is quiet.

So Herbert West is applying for a grant, someday, and he'll include Dan, of course. Their names next to each other, permanently connected in an academic paper, infamous: there's _full faith in our work_ , but that seems like something else, something much worse.

Dan knocks on Herbert's door before he waits for a response. Nothing. "Herbert?"

The door opens and Herbert sticks his head out and blinks. Dan can see he's wearing a t-shirt with a different pink splatter, worn thin where he's scrubbed at blood and viscera. No grant panel could take him seriously but the police might, and somehow that makes him fucking vulnerable.

"Just... wondering if I got everything you needed yesterday." He shifts, aware that Herbert's watching him intently and he's staring himself. "Forgot to ask."

"Excellent." Herbert smiles a quick smile, the one that appears when a corpse twitches to life. Possibly the only one in his repertoire.

"Uh, well..."

The door opens a little wider, Herbert leans on the doorframe and looks a little sick, a little—well, Dan recognizes the look on his face from other people, women. Herbert's not a bad kisser, just clumsy, though he's looking at Dan with wide, dark eyes that make him feel like a test subject.

"Um, Herbert? People don't usually kiss with their eyes open." Herbert glares, blushes. "No, no, it's okay, just—"

"Good night, Dan." Herbert shuts the door. Dan stands outside for a moment, scratches the back of his head, and tries to forget the look on Herbert's face.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm sorry," Dan says when he walks into the kitchen after another long shift, this time avoiding Herbert.

"Why?" Herbert asks, intent on carving another orange.

"I didn't understand."

"Be precise."

Dan scratches the back of his head again. "What were you thinking, when, uh..." He still can't bring himself to describe it.

"I wasn't thinking," Herbert says primly. "That's the problem."

"That's a problem?"

Herbert straightens his glasses. "That's usually your problem, Doctor Cain."

Dan raises an eyebrow. "What are you gonna do about it?"

Herbert's scalpel plunges straight through the orange to the table.

"Don't do that."

 ---

  
"Dan?" This time Herbert doesn't knock on Dan's door, he just barges right in. "Dan, I need the car keys."

"You can't drive."

Herbert glares up at Dan. "Don't tell me what I can't do."

It's this conversation again. "I'll drive you. What do you need the car for?"

"Food."

"Groceries?"

"I ordered pizza, actually."

"You can't live on takeout, Herbert." Dan folds his arms. "Couldn't you ask them to deliver it?"

"They don't deliver here," Herbert says, watching Dan to see if he believes it.

"Herbert, what did you—"

Herbert holds up his hands. "Purely because of the distance."

"I'm supposed to believe that?"

"That's what they told me!"

Dan sighs for what feels like the hundredth time today. "Fine."

"I ordered it under your name," Herbert says without moving, but Dan catches him by the elbow and drags him out of his room.

The car ride is silent yet again, and when they arrive at the restaurant Herbert gets out first—gets out at all, for once.

"Daniel Cain."

"Extra large pizza, pepperoni?" the man at the counter asks. Herbert wrinkles his nose at _pepperoni,_ but nods. "Okay."

Herbert doesn't correct him, and he pays for the pizza. It's the first time Herbert West has ever paid in full for the food he guilts Dan into picking up, and Dan's not going to argue. When they get home, Herbert gives Dan a plate along with his own and sets to removing the pepperoni from his pizza.

"If you don't like pepperoni, why'd you order it?"

"I know you like it," Herbert says without taking his eyes off his plate.

"You could have ordered it on half the pizza."

Herbert looks up, then considers the slice on his plate with regret.

\---

Dan has cold pizza for breakfast the next day, and Herbert is conspicuously absent. The furnace is conspicuously noisy, which usually means Herbert's turned it up for the basement in spite of the usual smell.

"Cain!" Herbert shouts at the sound of Dan's feet on the basement steps. His glasses are crooked, his shirt stained and wrinkled—he obviously slept downstairs. "You haven't come down here in a week. After everything I tried to do for you."

"So you've been manipulating me?" Dan asks, less incredulous than he sounds.

"We were supposed to be partners, Dan."

"We're not."

"I've shown you I'm capable of kindness, sincerity. Those human traits you want so desperately to see in our trials." Herbert narrows his eyes. "You're afraid of me."

"No."

"You are."

Dan descends the last flight of basement stairs and approaches Herbert, who flinches but doesn't back away. This time Herbert instinctively closes his eyes; it's nice to know he has instincts, Dan thinks.

"Is this how you treat women, Dan?" Herbert asks, breaking away for a moment.

"Does it matter?"

"I know it isn't."

"Yeah, but _does it matter_?" Dan hisses and angles Herbert's head up to meet his. Even with Dan's hand in his hair holding him back, he looks furious, pink, arrogant. Everything Dan ever wanted from Herbert West.

"This is anatomically improbable, Dan."

"Hold on." Dan lifts Herbert up by the back of one knee and wraps his other arm around him.

"Put me down."

Dan carries him over to an empty lab bench, lets go of Herbert long enough to throw a white sheet over it. Herbert grasps his shoulder, holding on halfway before Dan lands him on the table.

"Don't say I never did anything for you," Dan breathes in Herbert's ear. Herbert's whole body shudders and clutches Dan closer; if Dan didn't know better, he'd swear it was human.


End file.
